The Social Network

Like most right-thinking individuals, I put this film on my "Do Not Need To See" list the moment I heard about it. A film about the origin of Facebook? Facebook isn't special. I'm from Mono, man, I was friending people and writing stuff on walls when Mark Zuckerberg was still pissing his bed. Assuming that Mark Zuckerberg was still pissing his bed when he was eight. Which I think probably he was.

But then some names start popping up. David "Fight Club" Fincher is directing? Aaron "The West Wing" Sorkin is writing the script? Then it becomes interesting. Particularly the Aaron Sorkin part. He wrote Studio 60; which means that he managed to write a series in which he made me care about a bunch of guys writing Saturday Night Live every week. Which means, I think, he could pretty much make me care about anything.

And that's what this is. It doesn't matter what this is about, this is a conflict in which the weapons are finely honed quips and retorts. Sorkin has created a dense payload of weapons-grade dialogue, which has been put in the hands of a first class general in David Fincher, who marshalls his crack troops to deliver it for maximum effect - led into battle by Capt. Jesse Eisenberg, who for my money is turning into a sure-bet. I've seen three of his films now; they've been great, and he's been a major part of what made them great.

So, even though it's actually not important exactly what this is about for it to be good, we may as well talk about that. Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed essentially as a classic nerd; very intelligent, socially dysfunctional, and angry about it. He doesn't come across as the sweet geeky type. At all. His goal is to do something that distinguishes him, shows him to be above the herd of garden-variety geniuses with whom he attends Harvard. After creating a site called Facemash, which was a HotOrNot type site using pictures of female students hoovered up from the university's online face books (which seem to be student directories), he gets in a bit of trouble. Which makes him somewhat notorious.

This leads a group of fellow undergrads, led by the Winklevoss twins (depicted as a pair of arrogant boat-rowing bluebloods), to do the programming on a website they're planning called harvardconnection.com. Zuckerberg agrees to work with them, but instead pursues a similar project of his own design, thefacebook.com, along with his best friend Eduardo Saverin, who runs the financial side of the business. The business grows, and comes to involve Sean Parker, founder of Napster and Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. Zuckerberg and Saverin drift apart, which leads to Saverin leaving active involvement with Facebook, and Facebook's lawyers contriving to massively reduce the value of his shares.

Which leads us to the framing device of the story; everything we hear is told in flashbacks, as part of two deposition sessions, from two separate lawsuits against Zuckerberg; one from the Winklevoss twins about him stealing their idea, and one from Saverin about him screwing him out of the company. And we're mostly left to decide this for ourselves. Did Zuckerberg steal the idea, or did he just lose interest in the pretty lame and unoriginal Harvardconnection.com idea, and invent something better on his own? Did he screw Saverin, or did he just contrive to get rid of a guy whose contribution to Facebook had basically been to fund it in the early stages?

The film doesn't come down on either side, though it makes it clear that Zuckerberg has acted like a pretty shitty human being in his time. And as the lawsuits, in the real world, ultimately ended in negotiated settlements, none of this stuff was ever tested in court. But if you can take a film with an ambiguous ending, which doesn't offer any conclusions on the questions it asks, then you will very likely enjoy this film. I know that, for myself, I have pondered both of the cases, and want to read more about them before I would venture to have an opinion on either. And if a film is thought provoking, that's often far superior to presenting a concrete answer.